A key part of Penn State football’s 2020s offensive line renaissance is on the move.
Late Monday morning, ESPN’s Adam Schefter broke that the Houston Texans had traded Juice Scruggs— along with a fourth-round pick and a seventh-round pick— to the Detroit Lions in exchange for RB David Montgomery.
Scruggs spent three seasons in Houston and went to the playoffs in all three years. A second-round pick in 2023, Scruggs missed most of his first season due to going on injured reserve in late August. When the Texans activated Scruggs in late November, he became a regular, starting six of the teams remaining seven games, including each of the teams two playoff games at guard.
Scruggs kept his starting spot into the next season and played a career-high 944 snaps, getting a 64.4 run blocking grade per Pro Football Focus.
Scruggs didn’t get to play as much in 2025, only starting in one game and playing primarily on special teams.
Scruggs was a player quarterback Sean Clifford described as the “keystone” of Penn State’s offense ahead of the 2022 season.
He played at Penn State for five seasons and started for the last two.
In 2021, he started all 13 games, playing mostly guard. He started 12 of Penn State’s 13 games in 2022, playing center and being an integral part of a team that finished 11-2 and ended its season by beating Utah for just its second-ever Rose Bowl win.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.The week before spring practice, Scruggs suffered an injury that cost him his 2019 campaign.
It could have cost him a lot more.
Scruggs was seriously hurt in a single-car accident roughly a half-hour away from his hometown, Ashtabula, Ohio. The accident ejected Scruggs from the vehicle, broke his back and gave him a concussion. He spent a week in the hospital and another at home.
The accident could have ended his life, let alone his football career.
Scruggs knows how close everything was to being all over, and he never imagined that he’d play in a Rose Bowl Game.
“I couldn’t picture this,” Scruggs told NSN after the game. “If you had told me back in 2019 when I was in a brace that I would be a Rose Bowl champ my senior year, to go out on top, I would have told you, ‘yeah, right.’
